Three Things That Make A Stand-Out Manager

As part of your journey from someone who had a good idea, to business start-up (to eventual billionaire, you hope!) you will need to appoint people to manage on your behalf.

But if this is your first experience of hiring or appointing staff, you might not know what you are looking for.

Naturally, you will be looking for someone with a proven track record in the field, but then there is more than just that. There are the personal qualities and in management, these are the most important ones of all.

It might be, that you are looking for some tips on management for yourself. Just because you have a business brain and come up with an amazing idea (once again, you hope!) doesn’t necessarily translate into managerial skills or experience.

In a very small start-up, you may be having to assume the role of manager yourself, at least to begin with and not have any clue of how you should be conducting yourself.

Should you be like Stalin with your staff or more like Bambi the Boss?

One thing is for sure, if you are thinking about asking a friend or family member, or even promoting someone from the workforce to step up into a managerial role for the first time, there are some essential qualities they should have. And if they don’t have them, it could cost your business big time.

BE A GREAT LISTENER

We have all probably had the boss who doesn’t listen or the line manager who didn’t really register what you were saying to them and then went on to make a mess of something, which, of course, would usually then turn out to be your fault.

If your friend or employee isn’t the best listener in the world and often either gets things wrong or doesn’t get the messages at all, they might not be the right person for this role.

BE GOOD WITH PEOPLE

This one should be kind of obvious, but a good manager needs to be good with people.

Now sometimes people mistake ‘people skills’ with ‘needs to be the life and soul of the party’.

The person you appoint as manager does not need to be twenty-four-hour party person, they just need to deal with people – all types of people – well.

When they are in a roomful of people, do they go over and chat or do they prefer to be approached? The former is probably better for managerial posts.

Likewise, they should be capable of communicating with lots of different people, but all in an equitable manner.

Ask yourself, is this person regularly in conflict with others? Do they frequently fall out with co-workers or even friends? If this is the case, they might not be great management material.